When glass fibers are being produced for use in manufacturing air filter pads and the like, used and broken glass is fed into a furnace from which streams of molten glass are gravity discharged toward the periphery of a horizontal drum upon which the cooling glass fibers are wound. In most installations, the furnace is manually fed, but manual feeding of glass by even skilled workman sometimes result in glass being fed into the furnaces too fast with the result that the temperature of the molten glass therein is reduced below the flow temperature and the gravity discharge of streams of molten glass toward the drum periphery is interrupted. Accordingly, a need exists for an apparatus by which used and broken glass may be fed to the furnaces at controlled rates.
Various types of feed mechanisms including some of the general structural and operational features of the instant invention are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,382,371, 1,785,585, 1,822,705, 2,829,784 and 3,167,191. However, these previously known forms of material feeding structures are not well suited for feeding broken used glass to glass furnaces used in the production of glass fibers.